


Sehnsucht

by Tiberius_Tibia



Series: Lost in Translation [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 1930s, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bullying, Catholic Steve Rogers, Christian Character, Christianity, Confessions, Fic Exchange, Kid Bucky Barnes, Kid Steve Rogers, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Religion, Roman Catholicism, Spring Fling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:24:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiberius_Tibia/pseuds/Tiberius_Tibia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spring Fling Stucky Fic Exchange</p><p>Prompt: My *thing* is Steve relying on his old-school religion to deal with everything. I don't want it ignored, bastardised, or used against him, or anything about homophobia or anti-same-sex-relationships. If Bucky is helped by it too I'm good, but mainly I like Steve finding strength from it and that enabling him to help Bucky, do stuff, and be awesome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I- He Who Gets Slapped

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Starfire (kalypsobean)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/gifts).



> Sehnsucht- German, described by C.S. Lewis as "the inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what”, a yearning for the divine.

1931

“You remember your promise? The sisters are just lookin’ for a reason to keep us both after school.”

“‘Course I do, Buck,” Steve rolled his eyes, “You act like I can’t go a day without brawlin’.”

“Gee, I wonder why that is?” retorted Bucky.

“Well I can,” said Steve, “I go lots of days without getting in a fight. I went five whole weeks without one over Christmas.”

Now it was Bucky’s turn for an eye-roll. “Sure, ‘cause you were flat on your back in bed.”

Steve bristled wordlessly and Bucky diffused the growing tension with a friendly arm looped around the blonde’s narrow shoulders. With his free hand he pulled the gold watch—an heirloom from the long-deceased and much revered Luther Barnes, on loan from Mr. Barnes for the day—and twirled in comically in circles like Buster Keaton. “Don’t be sore, Stevie. It’s my birthday.” He ruffled Steve’s hair and pulled him up the steps to the school door.

Steve meant to keep his promise, he really did. Bucky had already been in five fights that week on Steve’s account, and it was only Thursday. They’d each spent three hours copying verses from 1 Thessalonians a hundred times as punishment from Sister Agnes while Bucky had graduated from scoldings to the belt at home. It was a lot, even for him and Bucky. Today was Bucky’s thirteenth birthday and they’d managed to scrape together enough money for a movie ticket and a soda after school. Bucky had his heart set on seeing Dracula. So Steve had the best of intentions for getting through the day without causing a speck of trouble.

Later, after he’d balled his fists and launched himself at Donny Weyland and his cronies, after they’d pitched him to the ground and begun stomping on him, after Bucky had flown in like an avenging angel and rolled Donny to the ground in a headlock, Steve tried to remember what had made him forget. It was something big, something important—he was sure of that. He just couldn’t dig past his ringing ears and swimming vision to recall what, exactly, it was.

And then Sister Agnes had rounded the corner and found Bucky, forearm still locked around Donny’s windpipe, and she dragged them both off by the ear to her office while Sister Beth-Anne clucked over Steve. Sister Agnes always behaved as though a single fight was the one sin that tipped you out of purgatory and into hell. She had a pointy, pious face and pointy, pious thoughts and there was no way Bucky was getting out of at least an hour’s detention and probably a few strikes with the cane. Steve endured his patching-up in the nurse’s station and waited dutifully until Bucky was released. From long experience he knew that protesting with her did no good; in her eyes Steve was one of the meek, when the Lord returned to call humanity to account he would inherit the earth and until then he could be mostly disregarded.

It was nearly five o’clock, too late for the movies, nearly too late to get home in time for the special dinner Bucky’s ma was making. Steve’s legs were stiff and his butt was sore from sitting so long on the hard tile floor when Donny and Bucky finally emerged. Donny ignored Steve and strode off in the opposite direction as Steve scrambled to his feet. He offered Bucky a watery smile.

“Thanks a lot.” There was no warmth in Bucky’s voice, none of the exasperated fondness in his eyes that usually followed one of their scrapes—even one that resulted in only Bucky taking the fall.

“I’m awful sorry Buck,” Steve began, “I didn’t mean for it to happen, I just—”

“Can it,” snapped Bucky, starting down the hall. “Christ, you’re like a broken record and I’m not in the mood.”

Steve trotted after him, still bleating apologies. “I tried to tell her, I tried to tell all the Sisters, that it wasn’t your fault—”

Bucky cut him off again, “Sure you did. Just like you always do. And they didn’t listen, just like _they_ always do.”  “It’s not right that you get all the blame Buck. I know that. I feel like a complete heel, especially today. But you know I’d take the blame for it, you know that right?” This string of words, along with matching his pace to Bucky’s left Steve winded.

“You gonna take the blame for this too?” Bucky chucked something at Steve hard enough to make his palms sting with the catch. It was Bucky’s great-grandfather’s gold watch. The glass face was smashed, the gold case dented and both the delicate black clock hands bending at odd angles. 

“Of course!” Steve’s heart leapt—this he could do, this he could spare Bucky. “I’ll tell your pop it was all my fault!”  
His enthusiasm earned him merely a cold look from Bucky. “Whatever you say, Steve.” He took the watch back and slipped it into a pocket.

It was dark when they reached the Barnes’ building, a good thirty minutes past when they were due. Steve doggedly followed Bucky up the stairs to his apartment. Inside they were met with four faces with varying degrees of worry, dismay and anger. The apartment had the rich, settled smell of a delicious meal that had been sitting too long uneaten. Bucky’s ma had made roast, the first one the family would have since Christmas. In a china gravy dish, the gravy had begun to congeal. There were two empty place settings—one for Bucky, one for Steve— and the boys came to stand formally behind their respective chairs. Rose and Rebecca began to cheer and clamor for permission to start but were silenced by a look from their father.

“We expected you half an hour ago. I had thought, since you would be carrying your grandfather’s watch today, that you might manage to be on time,” said Jack Barnes.

“It was my fault, sir,” Steve blurted before Bucky had even had the chance to open his mouth. “I got in a fight with some boys at school and Bucky got in trouble for helping me.”

Wordlessly, Bucky produced the broken watch from his pocket and handed it to his father. “I’m sorry, sir.” His mother pressed an anguished hand to her mouth.

“That was my fault too,” Steve went on, “And I promise I’ll make it right. I can find a place to mend it or I’ll get a job and save up until I can replace it. But please don’t blame Bucky. It was all my doing, and if anyone gets a hiding it should be me.” He stood with his shoulders square and his chin up, determined to meet the senior Barnes’ eye. 

The big man regarded the smashed watch resting in his palm like an injured mouse, its gold chain dangling. “No one’s getting a hiding,” he said at last, “Not tonight.” 

Winifred Barnes stood and touched her daughters’ shoulders with a light hand. “Come and help me warm the gravy,” she said. 

Mr. Barnes raised his gaze to the two boys; Steve’s blue eyes ashamed but steady, Bucky glaring angrily at his knuckles. “You’re not paying me back. I don’t want you taking a job away from someone who needs it to pay rent or put food on the table, not for any damned watch. And you’re not to worry your mother over this, Steven. You hear me? She’s got enough on her plate.”

Steve nodded dumbly, his elation at doing the right thing, saving Bucky from unjust punishment curdled like the gravy.

“Now, you two go and wash up for supper.”

In the small washroom, Steve snuck a glance at Bucky’s closed, cold face. “If you’d rather I just beat it you can tell me.”

“Food’s already cooked,” came the reply.  
Dinner was a strained, bleak affair. Everyone tried twice as hard to be cheerful, but the conversation sounded as high-pitched and discordant as Rose’s violin rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ and the food sat heavily in Steve’s stomach.

After struggling to finish his cake, Bucky walked Steve to the street door out of habit. “I’ll make it up to you Buck, honest I will,” Steve tried again, “We can go the pictures this weekend, and I’ll get you the greatest present ever.”

“You still don’t get it, do you? I don’t want you to make it up to me, I don’t want any damn present. So I’m not getting a hiding, so what? I asked you for one damn thing, and you blew me off. Well you know what? The hell with ya. I’m sick of sticking my neck out for somebody who doesn’t give a damn enough to keep his promise for one lousy day.”

Steve screwed his face up to keep the tears back. When he spoke, he buried the hurt beneath a layer of false irritation. He hadn’t cried in front of Bucky in nine years and he wasn’t about to start again now. “Well who asked you to, huh?”

“I ain’t your damn guardian angel,” Bucky griped.

“Good,” the falseness flaked off and Steve found himself genuinely angry, “‘Cause I sure as hell don’t need one.”

“Jesus Steve, what the hell’s the matter with you that you can’t keep your nose clean for five minutes? You got a chip on your shoulder big enough for all of Brooklyn.”

“I do not! Donny and the rest of them, you know what they’re like. They’re a bunch of no good punks who’ll push until somebody pushes back.”

“And it’s always gotta be you, don’t it?”

They stared at each other like strangers and it flitted through Steve’s mind just how much Bucky looked like his old man, how when disappointed they both held their shoulders straighter but couldn’t help a drooping around the eyes.

“I’m sorry about your birthday,” Steve said, careful to keep each word calm, “But I ain’t gonna beg for forgiveness for giving that goon what he had coming.”

“Fine.” Bucky wrenched the door handle and held it pointedly open for Steve. He did not follow Steve out.  
**

Steve walked home trying to find words that would fix things but as with Jack Barnes’ watch, his efforts brought him only failure and a creeping flush of shame. He said nothing to his mother about what had happened, mindful of Barnes Sr.’s admonishment not to worry her, but when the days passed and he neither brought Bucky home with him nor mentioned something funny Bucky had said or done, Sarah Rogers guessed enough.

“You boys have been friends such a long time, I’m sure whatever’s come between you can be worked out,” she said kindly one night after a silent, mopey dinner.

“I got in a fight with some kids at school. Bucky didn’t like it,” Steve answered, giving the abridged version of events, not a lie but also unlikely to give his mother more grey hairs.

“Oh Steve,” sighed his mother.  “I never asked him to stick his neck out, I can’t just go around letting guys like that get away with murder! He should know that!” 

Sarah Rogers grew very quiet for a moment. “He does know that Steve. If there’s anyone else besides me who knows how much heart you have its Bucky Barnes.” She paused and took his hand. “You have every right to be angry, sometimes I wonder how you can have room for anything else but anger when I think about the hand you got dealt. But you can’t let anger rob you of the good things in life.”

Steve thought of the lines he’d written out in those endless hours in the schoolroom when everyone else had gone home: _For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword._ and the line Sister Agnes had given Bucky: _As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him._ He thought of the days before he’d met Bucky—alone and friendless, sitting on his stoop watching the other kids play or tucked up in bed for weeks seeing no one but his mother or Father Owen or the doctor.

“What if I don’t know how?” his voice wavered but did not break. “I don’t want to be angry, sometimes I forget everyone else doesn’t feel this way all the time.”

Warm, thin arms wrapped around Steve and Sarah pressed her cheek to his. “I know you don’t. Bucky knows too. Just give him time, and don’t give up.”  
**

Another week went by during which Steve and Bucky said less than seven words to one another. This time, Steve made a concerted effort to keep his nose clean, determined to show Bucky that he was, in fact, capable of letting go of an affront. He kept his cool when Jimmy Kean followed him around with a dime store accordion, playing wheezing notes whenever Steve got out of breath. He felt rotten, but turned away when Donny and his crew confiscated all the fruit from the younger kids’ lunch pails and dropped it off the roof onto passersby. The rotten feeling grew when Lou Greeley pulled Dora’s braids all afternoon until she finally turned and slapped him, and got hauled to the front of the class by Sister Frances and given ten slaps with the ruler for unladylike behavior. Worst of all was that none of it seemed to make Bucky soften towards him. Steve wondered what it would be like to go the rest of his life, or at least the rest of his school days, without his best friend and if the black lump that roiled in his gut like a mass of rats would ever go away.  
**

It was Friday evening, after six o’clock mass, and Bucky wandered aimless circles around the streets surrounding St. Mary’s. His parents had taken the girls home, allowing him his usual freedom to roam and amuse himself until bedtime. Bucky was restless, irritable in a way that went beyond what his ma called growing pains. He missed Steve like a limb, more than a limb. He missed Steve like a limb he could talk to, that could argue and surprise him and make him laugh. But Steve was so stubborn, Bucky dreaded the thought that Steve might not forgive him. So he stayed away, avoided Steve and spent his time walking the Brooklyn streets until he came across a familiar pair of shoes hanging by their laces from an overhead telephone wire.

A few minutes of precarious climbing and prodding with a stick knocked the shoes to the pavement. They were Steve’s shoes; the special heels unmistakably those meant to help keep his back and legs properly aligned with the floor. Bucky tucked the shoes under his arm and began exploring the nearby alleys and side streets for his barefoot friend. And then he found the pants. Those could have been anybody’s, well anybody who was about 90 pounds and less than five feet tall. Which raised the question: where was Steve? He might have limped home shoeless but he would hardly have walked through Flatbush in just his shorts. Bucky saw that the faded corduroy had scorch marks around the ankles, reaching all the way up past the knee. He felt sick.

Seething, Bucky tried to gather his thoughts. Obviously, Steve had been alone—his ma worked nights on Fridays, and besides no one would have messed with him if he’d been with her. He would have wanted to get out of sight as soon as possible, hide from the bullies who’d jumped him and from anybody who might catch sight of his humiliation. Bucky looked around. The only place a guy might hide was the church. It was empty now, just the priest and a few stragglers lighting candles in the grotto.

Where would Steve be hiding? Bucky dropped to his knees and checked under the pews. He checked the coatroom. Finally, he climbed the ladder to the choir loft and sure enough, there was Steve, sitting in his shorts, his skinny legs stuck out in front of him, his face in his hands. He didn’t look up. Bucky cleared his throat and Steve jerked his head up.

“Think I found something of yours,” Bucky said, proffering the shoes and pants. Steve’s face was puffy, his nose was running. Bucky set his things down between them and sat beside Steve.

“Donny?” he asked. Steve nodded. “You okay? You didn’t get burned, did ya?” Steve shook his head.

“Christ, Stevie. I’m so sorry.”

Steve met his eyes for the first time in over a month. He opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to choke on his words. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters!” cried Bucky, “He can’t treat you that way and first thing tomorrow I’m gonna find him and his no good pals and teach them something they’re not gonna forget in a hurry!”

“I mean it doesn’t matter what I do,” said Steve, “I left them alone. I didn’t stick my nose in their business, didn’t argue with them. I tried to keep away from them. And they still…” he made a helpless gesture at his ruined trousers. “I know I can’t let things lie, I know I’m more trouble than I’m worth, and I try to tell myself it’s because I’m doing the right thing. But really… really it’s ‘cause I’d rather fight them on my terms, ‘cause they’re coming for me either way.”

Bucky put a hand on Steve’s arm and swallowed hard. “I know. I’m sorry about before. It wasn’t your fault either.”

Steve shook his head again. “No, you were right. I can’t keep my cool. I’m so angry all the time Buck. I’m angry at Donny and Jimmy and all the guys like them. I’m angry at the Sisters. I’m angry at everybody who doesn’t have to choke down a plate of liver every morning, or whose lungs and eyes and bones work like they’re supposed to. Every time I get sick, they all tell me how grateful I should be when I get better, but I’m not grateful. I was the first few times, but now. Now I’m just mad. What was God thinking, making me the way I am? Making me so goddamn useless?”

“You’re not useless,” protested Bucky, “You’re… you’re fine. You’re swell. You’re the best guy I know.” He tightened his arm around Steve’s shoulders. They sat for a moment, breathing together, each caught in his own turmoil of feeling. Finally, since he could think of nothing helpful to say, Bucky decided to find something useful to do. “Wait here, I’m gonna grab you a pair of pants out of the box.”

A hand stopped him as he prepared to climb down. “You can’t take stuff out of the box, that’s for the needy!”

“Well you need a pair of pants, jerk.” Bucky clambered down and disappeared in the dimly lit church. Minutes passed and Bucky did not return. If it was anyone else, Steve would have suspected him of screwing off home, leaving Steve high and dry. But not Bucky. Cautiously, craning his neck to check if anyone was still around, Steve climbed down. He slipped into the vestibule. Ahead, there was a light on under the door of Father Owen’s office and he could just make out voices with his good ear.

“I was just foolin’!” Bucky was pleading. Steve pushed the door open. Father Owen sat behind his desk, a folded pair of trousers between him and a squirming Bucky. The priest’s eyebrows rose in astonishment as he beheld Steve.

“It’s my fault, Father,” said Steve, “He was just borrowing them for me.”

The man’s brows nearly met his hairline. “And what, pray tell, has become of your pants, Steven?”

“They uh, got burned.”

Both boys stared at the carpet. The priest drummed his fingers. He was a reasonable man, in Steve’s limited experience. Short and solidly built, the kind of man who commended a slightly awed respect from his congregation but never implied that he was too smart for them. God might move in mysterious ways, but Father Owen always explained himself. “Burned, is it? I assume the two of you were smoking?”  “No!” came two voices in unison.

“Honest we weren’t!” said Bucky.

“Indeed?” Father Owen looked unimpressed. “I believe I will pay a visit to your parents Mr. Barnes, and to your mother, Mr. Rogers.”   
“Please,” protested Steve, “Don’t let Bucky get in trouble. It’s because of me. I— I had a disagreement with a fella from school.”

“And he burned your pants?”

Steve nodded at the floor.

“Were you still wearing these pants at the time?”

Neither boy said anything.

“Well,” the priest sighed, “I supposed that under the circumstances you’d better take the pants.” He held them out to Steve who shimmied into them.

“I hear from Sister Catherine that you’re quite notorious for _disagreements_ with your fellow students,” Father Owen continued addressing Steve, “It must be rather hard on one’s wardrobe.”

Steve and Bucky exchanged a nervous look. “Steve’s never picked a fight with anyone who didn’t have it coming, sir,” said Bucky.

“And I’ll do better, I promise,” Steve added, “Turn the other cheek like Sister Agnes says.”

The priest leaned back in his chair. “Do you boys know what that means, turning the other cheek?”

“Matthew chapter five,” piped Bucky, “Verse thirty-nine.” He looked please with himself, no need for Father Owen to know that his knowledge came from countless afternoon spent copying the phrase over after school.

“Yes, but do you know what it means? Why would Our Lord tell his followers that?” asked Father Owen patiently. 

“Don’t fight people even if they start it?” guessed Steve.

“James? Do you have an interpretation you’d like to share?”

Bucky fidgeted, uncertain why they hadn’t just been kicked out with an admonishment to keep out of trouble an return the pants washed and pressed as soon as possible. “So ya can get a matching set of shiners?”

Father Owen’s frowned deep enough to hide a laugh. “Almost. To turn the other cheek is to offer a form on nonviolent resistance that nonetheless insists upon one’s dignity.” He held up his left hand in demonstration. “In Bible times, a man would strike with the back of the hand, to show power over someone else. It was a gesture of contempt as well as aggression. But,” he waved his hand to the other side, “If after being struck with the back of the hand, his opponent turned his head and offered the other cheek, the aggressor would have no choice but to strike with the palm—not as a man might beat his oxen, but the way one fights with an equal. So, without raising a hand in retaliation, the persecuted demands to be treated with dignity.”

“What did Our Lord say about getting your pants set on fire?” The words were out before Steve could stop himself. Beside him, Bucky snorted and struggled so hard to keep from laughing that he began to cough.

“Are you familiar with the teachings of St. Augustine, Steven?” At Steve’s blank look the priest went on, “St. Augustine wrote that peacefulness in the face of a grave wrong that could only be stopped by violence would be a sin.”

“Sister Agnes says anger is one of the seven deadly sins,” Steve replied, “She says that just wanting to kill someone is the same as really killing them.”

“Wrath is a sin. When we let our anger consume us, when we feed it, tend it the way we should be tending the good in our lives, then it is a sin. Anger and violence are like a river, they can nourish or they can destroy. It’s up to you to determine which.”

The boys left the church that evening with a sigh of relief that there would be no visits, no reports on the day’s happenings to their parents, already buzzing with the euphoria of their reconciliation. From time to time, as he grew older and the anger banked within him flared occasionally beyond his control, Steve thought about what Father Owen had said that night. He looked up the bit about peacefulness in the face of wrong, read some of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas himself, translating the ornate prose into his own words. Their arguments answered the growing unease he felt when people howled for peace at any cost, that America must not get involved in the mess overseas. Steve Rogers distilled those ancient teachings, diffused with his own moral sense and Irish temper into a single, simple phrase.

It was a phrase he spoke one night, ten years later to a short, bespectacled man in an army recruitment tent. 

“I don’t like bullies,” he said, “I don’t care where they’re from.”  
**


	2. Part II- The Pilgrim’s Regress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alone and separated  
> From all joy,  
> I look to the heavens  
> Towards the other side.  
> -Goethe

2011

He was afraid to go in. On the outside, the church looked exactly the same. It was the only building on the street that did. Steve was scared to death that he would step inside and everything would be different. Or not. He couldn’t decide which would be worse.

The 8:30 mass began and ended, and then the 10:30, and still he stood, paralyzed, uncertain what to do. It was fifty minutes later, with the doxology playing and the congregation tucking their hymnals away that Steve slipped inside. As the people filed out, he sidled his way to the front and dropped into a pew a few rows from the altar. The building was different, more brightly lit, with electric candles and speakers wired into the vaulted arches of the ceiling. But the smell was the same and the organ played the same hymns it had seventy years earlier. Steve shut his eyes and let the familiarity of it wash over him.

An indeterminate number of minutes later, he was startled back into the present by a tap on the shoulder. The current priest was very dark, with broad hands and a broad smile. He spoke with a lilting accent Steve later learned was Nigerian and introduced himself as Father Okoye.

“Steve Rogers. I saw you on the news, didn’t I? You are that Steve Rogers?” he asked with polite curiosity.

Steve blushed, wishing he’d had the presence of mind not to give his real name. 

“Was this your church, Captain? Before the war? It must be very strange to you now.”

It came out in a flood— what Jane’s friend Darcy would have called word vomit. Steve had sidestepped his SHIELD appointed shrinks with a dexterity of a tango dancer, but confession was something he knew well. Something about the familiar smell, the jewel-like light of the stained glass, the priest in his white and purple robes, it all wound together and then he was hunched over in the pew, telling this stranger how he had urged Bucky to join him and keep fighting, how he had let Bucky fall, how he had put the plane in the water and shut all thought of saving himself in a little box that he could safely ignore and pretend that it wasn’t a death wish. Suicide was a sin, he’d been taught that all his life, but it was so easy to pin another name on it.

“Stop a moment, my son,” Father Okoye held up a hand, “Is this is a conversation we ought to have in there?” He pointed to the confessional.

When the curtain fell softly closed behind him and Father Okoye opened the little connecting window, Steve felt safer than he had in any of SHIELD’s high-tech, secure bunkers. He spoke of his grief for Bucky, for Peggy, for the life he should have had in the world he’d been born into. He spoke of his anger, his distrust of SHIELD and his new COs. He spoke of his doubts, that God cared what happened to him, that God even existed in this brave new world, if He ever had to begin with.

“This wasn’t what I prayed for when I was sick. Health yes, even to be big and strong, but I never wanted to be special. That’s not what it was about. I would have been happy if the serum had made me a regular, healthy soldier. And I wasn’t supposed to be the only one. If the other guys in at Lehigh could have gotten it too. All I know is I went from feeling like one kind of freak to another. It was worth it when I thought I’d saved Bucky. But without that… I know it’s not meaningless. I know all the other people I’ve helped matter, they have lives and families. They’re important. I just can’t seem to feel it. I can’t feel anything except when I hate them for having lives and families while I have… Nick Fury.”

”The standard answer absolves the confessor of all sin, yet I’ve found that most people unpack their guilt a piece at a time. So I absolve you, Steve Rogers, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, I absolve you of whatever guilt you are able to leave behind today. But you needn’t leave it all here today. You may find there is more you have to say to me, or one of my brethren, and when you’re ready we will be waiting here for you. You are still a good man, Captain Rogers. Doubt and anger may hide that from you, but they are shadows, they cannot destroy something as solid and tangible as a soul." 

**

 

2012

“Everything I learn about the years I’ve missed, I can’t see Him anywhere,” Steve said to the shadowy outline of the priest. “It was easier, even in the war, even at the very worst when we freed the camps. So many of the men and women there believed, it seemed shallow and selfish to doubt God if they were still faithful. But now…” he trailed off. “I wouldn’t have been the person I was, the man Dr. Erskine gave a chance to, without all this. Maybe it’s not new, maybe I stopped being that guy when I let Bucky fall. But seventy years is a long time to be dead. Maybe if it had only been three days I’d feel different.” He laughed bitterly. “When’s the Papal Bull on gods and aliens coming out?

They sat, not in the confessional this time, but in Father Okoye’s office—where Steve and Bucky had sat all those years ago. “I’m being rude,” Steve said flatly, “You don’t have to put up with that.”

“Rudeness is an easier kind of ugliness to excuse than violence,” answered the priest unperturbed, “And you’re not wrong. The Battle of Manhattan changed the way we think about a great deal. Thor and his kind, the ah— how do you pronounce it?”

“Chitauri.”

“Chitauri, yes. Certainly they were beyond our understanding before the invasion, they may be beyond the understanding of most people for some time to come. But that does not mean they always will be. Think of the first Europeans to arrive on this continent, they were strange and powerful, but they were not gods.”

“No. Neither were Schmidt or Himmler or any of the others. But does it really matter? The end was the same. People with power, they might was well be gods. Why the hell not? We can’t stop them all, and we can’t get rid of them. We’re bailing a lifeboat with a sieve.” Okoye’s face remained impassive, only his dark eyes reflecting Steve’s grief and rage. “I read about those trials, the priests who were abusing kids,” Steve went on. “I can’t— I don’t know how to get it through my head. Aliens are one thing, but that it’s the same people I always thought were _good_. It makes me sick.”

“Me too,” said the priest. “You spoke before of your anger with your new superiors, the secrecy and fear-mongering you see being harbored there. But you know that it is an institution founded for right, for justice and the protection of the innocent. Being angry at a man is easy. You forgive him or you do not. Either way, that anger is clear and direct. Being angry at an institution, a country, a church— there is no one place to direct that anger. It scatters like light through a prism. The only thing to do is to decide whether the institution is, at its core, worth saving. I had many doubts during the exposure of the pedophile priests. Many of Catholics did, clergy and congregants both.”

“And you decided to stay.”

“I did. And, since you came back here, since you are talking to me now, I would guess that you have too.”

“For now,” said Steve.

“For now,” agreed the priest, “And while we stay, we will work to make it as it should be.”  
**

The message could not have been any clearer if it had arrived via Western Union. Natasha, Sam, Fury— everyone thought discovering the Winter Soldier had made Steve’s unlikely resurrection bearable. They had it backwards. Steve knew there was a reason he’d been spared, he had been waiting two years to learn what it was.  
**

2015

The doctors called it a kind of catatonia. After the Winter Soldier marched into SHIELD headquarters, after eighteen hours of medical exams and interrogation, he was escorted to a white walled room they were careful not to call a cell. He’d immediately curled up on the cot and gone to sleep. And when he woke up, the team could get nothing out of him. No words, no eye contact, he lay staring at the ceiling, indifferent to all. The first nine times Steve was permitted to visit he spent sitting on the floor by Bucky’s bed, talking to Bucky’s unmoving back, occasionally stroking the dark hair.

They’d always predicted that Sgt. Barnes needed time to adjust, among other things, and that he would eventually begin to participate in his new life.

“On the bright side, there’s no way he can stand trial like this,” one of the endlessly interchangeable therapists commented to Steve one day while Bucky was still not eating. Steve thought all his anger had been squeezed into the box labeled Hydra, but it seemed there was still a healthy supply left for these useless, thoughtless bastards who were failing his best friend.

The serum did strange things to the metabolism, things that hadn’t been studied well enough to make any accurate hypotheses. Bucky hadn’t eaten in nearly six weeks and there was beginning to be talk of installing a feeding tube, when Sgt. Barnes seemed to have emerged from his impassive chrysalis. He answered when spoken to, bathed and ate when prompted, still spent any unstructured time sleeping or staring at nothing, and refused point blank to leave his room, but even the smallest promise of progress left Steve feeling giddy, almost high.

It made the crash that much worse.  
**

“What do you mean he’s pleading guilty?” Steve’s heart rate tripled, his hands trembled. 

“Sergeant Barnes has made his wishes very plain,” Useless Shrink Number 1 contorted his face in what Steve supposed was a look of compassion. Behind him, the line of duckling shrinks that followed him around nodded in sympathetic agreement.

“You’re supposed to be looking out for him, clearly he’s not thinking straight.”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do. He’s been judged competent to stand trial, he’s been provided with council and the best psychiatric support available.”

Someone laid a firm, soothing hand on Steve’s shoulder. He spun round and found himself facing the composed form of Agent Coulson. 

“Phil please,” Steve made his eyes as big and earnest as possible, “You have to stop this. Bucky’s not guilty, he doesn’t deserve to be locked up for the rest of his life.”

“I know that Steve, truly I do. But the medical and psych clearances have gone through and charges have already been filed. I can’t guess what’s going on in his head right now,” said Coulson, “But maybe he’ll listen to you.”  
**

“Save your breath Steve, I know what I’m doing.” Bucky sat cross-legged on the narrow cot. “You should go home before you say something you regret. Maybe go for a run. Come visit me in ADX Florence after I get settled, we can play pinochle.”

“This is wrong Buck.”

“I did a lot of wrong things myself.”

“And letting them lock you up is going to what? Wipe the slate clean?”

Bucky’s mouth quirked in a humorless grin, “So what you're saying is two wrongs don’t make a right but two Wrights made an airplane?”

His brittle sarcasm grated Steve’s nerves. Leaning forward, Steve cupped Bucky’s face in his hands, his friend’s stubble scratching against his palms. “Talk to me Buck, please.”

Abruptly, Bucky slapped Steve away. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“You could help people, you could help me. There’s still Hydra agents out there. What good are you doing anyone rotting in here?”

“Go away.”

“I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”

“Yes you are.” He seized Steve around the back of the neck in a sudden, brutal left-handed grip, rolling Steve to the side, then hauling him to his feet. The fingers around Steve’s throat were tight enough, not to choke, but certainly enough to leave deep, painful grooves in the soft tissue. Bucky forced Steve to the door.

Steve let himself become dead weight. He tipped Bucky forward, throwing him neatly over his shoulder to the floor. And then they were scrapping like kids, fancy training buried under layers of history and hurt. Steve jumped on Bucky’s back—his go-to move for wrestling Bucky from the earliest days of their friendship. Bucky reached back and caught a handful of Steve’s hair, their legs tangled up with each other’s. A metal elbow drove into Steve’s gut, winding him and loosening his hold on Bucky who threw him off like an angry steer.

He grappled with Steve, locking his arms around the bigger man’s waist, driving him against the wall. It was uncannily like their fight on the bridge of the helicarrier, except this time Steve wasn’t giving up. He locked his arms around Bucky’s broad shoulders, the thin grey t-shirt riding up over Bucky’s spine, bunching beneath his shoulder blades. Trapped in Steve’s bear hug, his friend battered at him with an open hand. Steve snaked a leg between Bucky’s own, sweeping the smaller man off balance, pitching him forward against Steve. And then the heaving of Bucky’s shoulders were sobs. His hands stilled and he rested a sweaty forehead against Steve’s chest, letting out a little, broken sigh when Steve rested his chin on the top of Bucky’s bowed head.

It was the first time Steve had held him—really _held_ him— in more than seventy years. Bucky would not allow himself any kind of physical contact when he was awake, and Steve hadn’t felt right laying more than a comforting hand on him when he wasn’t master of himself. Bucky sagged and Steve lowered them both to the floor.

“You have to stop punishing yourself, Buck,” Steve murmured.

“Shut up, punk,” said Bucky and kissed him. For a moment the kiss lacked all familiarity and Steve took a deep, panicky breath at the strangeness of it. But Bucky used that as his chance to sweep a tongue into Steve’s mouth, the way he had a thousand times before. Steve slid his hands back beneath Bucky’s shirt, lifting it all the way up this time, over Bucky’s head and off onto the floor. He clasped Bucky to him, the same relief and sense-memory coursing through him here that he’d felt in the church the first time he’d set foot in it this century. Only when everything fused into a sensation as perfectly preserved as a scene in a snow globe did he realize how much he’d feared that it would have changed. 

Bucky rocked against him, hard now in his baggy SHIELD sweats. He thrust against Steve’s thigh, gently worrying the shell of Steve’s ear with his teeth in the exact way that had always driven him crazy. It drove him crazy now. He couldn’t feel Bucky well enough, not through the thick denim of his jeans. They made inarticulate, unhappy noises at each other as Steve wriggled to open his pants while Bucky clung to him like a lamprey. He succeeded in getting the offending article down around his hips before Bucky overbalanced them, and Steve sprawled on his back, the light glaring in his eyes, Bucky on top of him, trapping Steve beneath him.

Steve’s own erection strained against his boxers, the tip leaking a small dark spot just against the place where the waistband of Bucky’s sweats gives way to smooth, flat stomach. When Steve brought his hand up to give the palm a long, thorough lick Bucky made a positively obscene noise deep in his throat. And then Steve had them both in hand, and was doing all the work, twisting, squeezing, swiping his thumb across each of them. Every other inch of his best friend had gone nearly slack against him, letting Steve control the pace, the angle, every pulse and breath. Steve’s arm was pinned between them. His hand would be numb in a few minutes but that was alright. There was no tease about the contact between them then, only need. Bucky came first, spilling over Steve’s hand and rousing himself to trail tiny, chapped kisses down the side of Steve’s neck as he followed.

The momentum of the moment seemed to pass from Bucky as soon as Steve’s breathing evened out. It was Bucky who tidied them both with his discarded shirt. Steve braced himself for Bucky to pull away, for the place against his chest where he could still imagine Bucky’s heartbeat to grow cold. But Bucky settled against him again, subdued now and unwilling to meet Steve’s eyes.

“I’m not changing my answer Steve. I don’t want you hate me for it, though I guess that’s up to you.”

Steve dropped a kiss into Bucky’s sweaty hair. “I don’t hate you, never could. But can you at least tell me why?”

Bucky’s throat worked, he rubbed his brow with his metal fingers. “How can you not know?” he whispered, “You read the file. You saw everything I did.”

“What they made you do. No one alive can understand everything they did to you, so no one alive should be allowed to judge.”

“Then let me judge myself, and trust me when I say that this is the best option.”

“If our roles were reversed, if it was me instead of you, would you hold me responsible?”

“I have a headful of awful memories already, Steve. Burning people alive in their homes, shooting kids in front of their parents, decades of torture and murder and terror. I can just about stand remembering what they did to me. But not the things I did. If I fight this, if I go to trial… I’ll drown in it. I know you think I’m in prison in here, but it’s the other way around. This is the only place I’m safe from it. There are mobs out there, Steve. All the people I ever hurt howling at me. If I go to trial, if I try to pretend I’m innocent, that I deserve a second chance then they won’t just be in my head anymore. You’ll see them too. Everyone will. And I can’t stand that.”

“They’re not your victims Buck. I know a trial would be hard, harder than I can probably imagine right now. But you deserve to have your life back. You deserve to do what you want, fight Hydra, if that’s what will help. Or go far away and never look back.”

“I do want to fight them. And sometimes that’s the most frightening thought of all. I hate them so much Steve, for me and you and everyone else. It would be so easy to let the worst part of me take over again. _He_ doesn’t care about the mobs, _he_ doesn’t care about anyone, not even you. And I know if I let him back in, I’ll never get rid of him and then I really am damned.”

Steve was silent for a long moment, thinking, letting Bucky’s breathing match his own.

“I understand guilt. Not on the scale you do, I don’t think anyone could truthfully claim that, but the days after I let you fall… You shouldn’t have to carry it all on your own.” Steve sat up, trying to find the right words.

“You can’t carry it for me Steve. Even if you could, I wouldn’t let you.”   
“I wasn’t thinking of me.” He looked down at Bucky, still curled on the floor, looking so young and vulnerable under the bright, impersonal fluorescent lights. Steve stroked the top of his head gently and Bucky couldn’t help nuzzling into the touch. “How long’s it been since your last confession?”

Bucky blinked at him in pure surprise. “I think I’m a little beyond a few rosaries.”

“Would you do it though? Whatever the reason— if you're as angry at God as I sometimes am, then let Him carry all that crap for you, if you’re afraid, if you need someone to say that it’s okay to forgive yourself let it be that. I wanted to save you, I always want to save you. And maybe this time I can’t, maybe this is too big for me. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be saved.”

“Saved from what exactly?”

“From all of it— the ghosts, the mob, whatever you think people will do, whatever they actually do say and do. I’ve been furious with God for letting me live, for keeping me around in this place all alone. I even thought it was obsolete, everything we were taught growing up, that it was a relic like me. But it’s not. Not if it can still save you.”

Bucky turned his head away, avoiding Steve’s fervent gaze. “I’ll still have to stand trial.”

“I know.”

“They could still condemn me.”

“I know,” Steve’s voice was exhausted but hopeful, “And I’ll be with you whatever happens.”

“Till the end of the line?”

“You’re goddamn right.”

Bucky reached across and took Steve’s hand in his. He squeezed gently, the plates of his metal hand still warm against Steve’s palm. “Alright,” he sighed and laughed softly, brushing his thumb across Steve’s bruised knuckles, “Good thing Sister Agnes wasn’t around to see that brawl. I’d be copying out the entire New Testament _and_ Cain and Abel to boot.”

“Sister Agnes was a pill,” said Steve firmly and Bucky hunched over in spasms of silent laughter.

When he finally stopped he asked with false levity, “I won’t traumatize some poor sap fresh out of seminary, will I?”

“Nah,” Steve shook his head, “Father Okoye’s tough. He’d give Father Owen a run for his money.”

“He’d have to be tough to put up with you.” Bucky paused then went on uncertainly, “Think they’ll give me furlough? If I’m going to do this, I want to do it right. Is St. Mary’s still standing?”

“It sure is.”

“Then ask Coulson if we can go tomorrow. I… I want to get this over with.”

“Okay.” Steve rested his head against Bucky’s again, idly stroking his fingers up and down the plates of Bucky’s metal arm. “But at a decent hour. None of that six a.m. mass crap.”

“Nope,” agreed Bucky, “I know you too well for that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first attempt at a fic-exchange, and it was a challenging prompt for me, as I was raised Catholic until my first holy communion, followed by a musical chairs of church-trying with my mom, with me not having the courage to tell her that I hadn’t believed in god since I was very, very young. 
> 
> This story took me some strange places; in particular to the letters my devoutly Catholic grandfather wrote to his family during and after his service in World War 2. Ultimately I had a lot of fun writing it and I really hope it satisfies. For now it’s complete, but there are at least two discarded storylines exploring Steve’s faith that I might return to in the future. If any Catholics have criticism or ideas or head canons about Steve and/or Bucky’s faith please feel free to chat with me about it at caligularib.tumblr
> 
> Let me know what you think and thanks so much for reading!


End file.
